South African authorities should heed widespread calls to drop a 'secrecy bill' that opponents say will criminalise whistle-blowing and stifle investigative journalism, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. The Protection of State Information Bill, which makes possessing or publishing anything the government deems 'classified' an offense punishable by up to 25 years in prison, was passed by the National Assembly last month and now must be approved by the upper house of Parliament before President Jacob Zuma can sign it into law. During a fact-finding and advocacy mission to South Africa this week, CPJ Chairman Sandra Mims Rowe, along with CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney, met with a broad spectrum of journalists, editors, press freedom advocates, and civil society leaders to discuss the bill.

Mary Lawlor, Director of Front Line Defenders updates the '10 on the 10th campaign', one year after it was launched on International Human Rights Day.

The Grassroots Focus Index (GFI) is an index that determines the extent to which the grassroots are prioritized in development. It is an instrument that allows development actors to listen more closely to the grassroots perspectives in a systematic and methodologically sound manner.

Decisions resulting from the UN COP17 climate summit in Durban constitute a crime against humanity, according to Climate Justice Now! a broad coalition of social movements and civil society. 'Here in South Africa, where the world was inspired by the liberation struggle of the country’s black majority, the richest nations have cynically created a new regime of climate apartheid.'

A group of Egyptian women’s rights advocates in Alexandria organised a protest recently calling for greater participation for women in public and political life, coinciding with the anniversary of the human rights declaration. The stand was organised by the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women in Alexandria and took place outside the Alexandria library. The participants called for a parallel parliament for women, where their causes are presented and discussed away from the shortcomings of the current political system that helped eliminate female participation.

Ivorians voted Sunday to elect a new parliament in a poll boycotted by the party of former strongman Laurent Gbagbo, who is awaiting trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity. With Gbagbo sitting in an International Criminal Court (ICC) cell, the coalition backing President Alassane Ouattara is widely expected to gain a majority of the 255 seats in the new assembly. The vote comes only a year after the poll that brought the world's top cocoa producer, once a beacon of stability in the west African region, to the brink of civil war in a conflict that claimed some 3,000 lives.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that more than a million children in the Sahel region of West Africa were at risk of severe and life-threatening malnutrition over the coming year as a result of ongoing food shortages. UNICEF in a statement made available to PANA in New York, said it would require an initial US$65.7 million to respond to the crisis. It stated it was already ordering therapeutic foods and distributing emergency stocks in affected countries. It said that the biggest caseload is in Niger Republic, where an estimated 330,600 children under the age of five were at risk.

Members of the campaign group, Nigerians in Diaspora Against Anti Same-Sex Laws held a protest in front of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in New York on Monday, 5 December. A Nigerian representative in New York met with the protestors to receive the petition letter to the Nigerian President with 53,000 supporters.

On Monday 5 December MediaClimate held a seminar titled 'Media meets climate: A problem or a solution for social movements' at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard campus. MediaClimate is an international research group that looks at media coverage of the annual UN climate summits. The aim of the seminar was to explore the relationships between COP17, the media and the different angles of the stories. One of the issues raised was that COP and climate change terms are often difficult to understand.

The Food Sovereignty Campaign believes the time has come for land occupations. This movement of emerging farmers and farm dwellers is based in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. ‘Land occupations are the new way of doing land reform,’ says Johan Jantjies, the convenor of the Food Sovereignty campaign. ‘Recently the government brought out a Green Paper on Land Reform. They made it clear they have no plan of how to get the land from the capitalist owners. Without such a plan how can you even talk about land reform? We have a plan and that is for the landless to occupy the land.’

Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion to outflows of ill-gotten gains between 2000 and 2009, according to a coming report by Global Financial Integrity. According to GFI economist Sarah Freitas, who co-authored the report, corruption, kickbacks and bribery accounted for the vast majority of the increase in illicit outflows. 'The scope of Ethiopia’s capital flight is so severe that our conservative US$3.26 billion estimate greatly exceeds the US$2 billion value of Ethiopia’s total exports in 2009,' Freitas wrote in a blog post on the website of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.

Mozambique is the most corrupt country in southern Africa, with 68 per cent of people having paid a bribe in the past year, according to a survey by Transparency International and Gallup. More than a third of those using health services or education had to pay a bribe.

This CTV programme followed Blikkiesdorp resident, Jerome Daniels, as he took us through his journey from living on the pavements of Symphony Way; Delft; to being one of the 45 people who wrote and published their own collection of stories in the book titled NO Land! NO House! NO Vote!

In solidarity with the millions of people already feeling the impacts of climate change, hundreds of people protested in the halls of the UN Climate Talks last week to demand that nations not sign a 'death sentence' in Durban. The march filled the hall outside of the main negotiating room in Durban just as the afternoon round of talks were scheduled to begin. Standing side-by-side with delegates from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries, civil society representatives sang traditional South African freedom songs and chanted slogans like, 'Listen to the People, Not the Polluters'.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s election standoff intensified on Sunday after a team of international observers reported that incumbent Joseph Kabila’s win was so flawed it lacked credibility. Kabila, in power since 2001, was on Friday named the winner of the November 28 poll, but runner-up Etienne Tshisekedi immediately rejected the result and declared himself president.

Fresh fighting broke out in South Sudan on Sunday following a rebel assault on civilian and police bases in Pigi County in the troubled Jonglei state, officials said, four days after an earlier attack in Jale Payam in the same state. Militiamen loyal to rebel leader and former army renegade General George Athor Deng attacked Atar village from four directions, killing scores and wounding others, deputy governor Hussein Maar Nyuot said.

The US-based AgriSol Company has landed another lucrative land deal involving 10,000 hectres amid growing public outcry about the recent land deals sealed by the company in Rukwa region. The company, mid this year, came under attack from land rights activists and politicians, especially Members of Parliament for acquiring over 300,000 hectres located at Mishamo and Katumba areas in Mpanda district for agricultural development.

Amnesty International called for enforcing an effective global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in light of Egyptian security forces’ use of foreign-made teargas and other ammunition. The United States’ supply of ammunition to Egypt’s security forces prompted Amnesty’s call for munitions use to be included among the conventional arms regulated by the treaty. 'An effective Arms Trade Treaty, which includes a comprehensive scope and robust national licensing controls, would help ensure that arms exports of the USA and other major arms-transferring countries, do not fuel serious human rights abuses,' said Brian Wood, Arms Control Manager of Amnesty International.

More than 1,500 people took part in a march of Durban streets on 5 December to voice their concerns about climate change and agro-ecology. Banners and posters in hand conveyed messages like 'We are for cooling down the earth' as people from countries as far as Mali, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Germany, Brazil and The Philippines took part. The event was also to bring awareness to the food sovereignty campaign, which promotes principals such as equal participation, fights against greedy farm or agriculture owners, and a fair rewarding system for farm workers.

Alternatives Cameroon, an LGBTI organisation, reports that government policy makers last week convened to endorse a preliminary draft of a law that imposes harsher penalties for homosexual acts. The organisation revealed that the government convened a validation meeting on Friday 2 December during which a revision of the current law regarding homosexuality was discussed.